To speculate and elaborate a little on Red Pen's "Reality Check"....
Presumably, as a sys admin, you have a web server running. Along comes your boss to tell you to implement the common name protocal. Here we go:
1. You set up some sort of Directory Server. This will store the mapping and define the category schema's of your intranet's store of documents. Depnding on how logical your file systems schema's is, your directory schema might be very similar.
2. You add entries to your directory server - one for every document you wish to be accessible by common names. Good thing about this: your entry names can contain spaces.. yay.:P
3. Browsers, once they support it, will allow you to configure a directory server to point at (Netscape already does, for use with your address book).
4. Browsers will have functionality such that when you type in a document name, it searches said directory server, beginning at a particular root, for said entry. Results are returned, I suppose... depends how this is implemented on the browser with regards to how results are handled/displayed.
5. You have do cocurrently maintain your filesystem in synch with your directory server, or alternatively, develop a tool which allows some sort of method to 'check in' a document to your intranet that handles the moving of the file to the proepr location on the file system and additionaly adds an entry to the directory structure reflecting its location in your document hierarchy.
6. Your end users only have to remember document names, not full paths, but they will get different results based on search roots. (Ie... only under 1998 documents, for instance.) Each document will, I assume, have a full DN (distinguished name) that describes their location in the hierarchy (for example: ou="netscape.com", c="1998", c="Budgets", cn="Version 0.6") but if you search from say ou="netscape.com, c="1998", c="Budgets" as a search root, a search on Version 0.6 will return only the one record, since it must be a unique identifier (thus the name distinguished name).
Keep in mind this is a speculation of how it will be implemented. I have lots of directory server experience, but as of yet I have yet to see it implemented as a layer beween a brower and a file structure.
Hope this helps - it's not exactly a search engine, and it does end up in more work for the sys admin, as far as I'm concerned. And as always, I never suggest that I'm always right.:) Suggestions are welcome.
Directory servers are ideal for just that. Directories. Directory information. Directory entries can contain attributes, secutiry information, and organization hierachy, and most importanly a schema of allowed attributes based on position within the hierachy. Being a simpler, friendlier revision of X500(okay, I can't remember every protocal name:P) this is what it was designed for, and this is what it's good for.
If your point is that corperations are pushing it into their intranets cause it was quite the buzzword for awhile, I'll agree. It does make storing vast amounts of hierachial data very fast, but so does.. well, a file system. I'm not against the whole CN thing, and consequently the deployment of directory servers, but I/am/ against using it for the resolution of documents and files. It's perfect for looking up names, records, entries. But it's absolute overkill for document location resolution. Akin to using a tank to kill an ant.
In all fairness, the explosion of the web could never have been forseen. And it's not exactly easy to get a new protocal layer out the door.
But more importantly, I disagree with your assesment of the use of domain names. I'd charge the popularity of.com addresses is the result of media hype. For example, www.such.com/sirslud seems inherently uncooler than www.sirslud.com... because the public associates having a whole.com to yourself as pretty damn cool. Why, you'll never have a building as large as Coca-Cola's, but you can have a web address that's just as slick and simple as theirs!
www.coke.com/somesuchpromo is just as easy to remember as www.somesuchpromo.com, if not more intuitive, but there seems to me that there's aa certain unsaid rule that if you need to go beyond the.com, it's not a respectable front door to a commercial site. If anything, I'd say that on the commercial side, URLs are misused.
Not to mention that document names have nothing to say about their heirarchy and context - URLs do if the site is structured properly. To pull the example off CNN, 1996 Budget Plan says nothing about the group, stage, and version of the document. At least a URL, and consequently knowing the directory stucture leading to the document enforces a certain amount of organization and context for the document. Common names simply add one more layer on which to maintain and organize, a thing we all know techies hate the worst.;) If anything, I see this as a technology to keep people from having to type file extensions and slashes.. is this really worth a whole other server/protocal/admin_duty stuffed onto your network?
Am I missing something? The whole reason URLs get hard to remember is because some sites are designed improperly and HTML documents are given cryptic names. But just as web maintainers fail to maintain an easy to remember document hierarchy, they will also be resposible (presumably) for setting up the common name servers. Inevitably, they will just make the same mistake once given this Common Name Format. (Ie, every large company I've ever worked with has had so much documentation that they had a numbering system for documents. I'd imagine this is what they'd use if given a Common Name layer. Is it that much easier to remember "RSV 1345 HM Control Interface Design Document" than "spudge/current/dds/" and grab the document from that directory?)
At any rate, abstraction by way of layers like these only obfuscate matters more - and the keep the end users from having any clue whats really going on. The reason help desks get so many calls isn't cause people are stupid.. it's because technologies designed to make stuff "user friendly" only inhibit users from learning how to solve problems themselves. Techies on a mission to make everything easy for end users are (knowingly or not) contributing to the dumbing down of "end users" - I often charge M$ does the same thing. Hiding functionality behind a nice curtain only makes matters worse... and just when the general public was starting to get the hang of things.... sigh.
If you're having problems (I'm using Netscape for Solaris, but I don't have any problems), and want to use Lynx, go into your user preferances and check "Lite slashdot". At least I think thats what it's called. It makes things simpler for Lynx and other lite browsers.
I give him/her props. = Respect to him/her! Props to Dave. = Respect to Dave! He/she's got props. = He/she gets my respect!
I don't think there is a word to word mapping for it, but you can give it out or have it. In any case, its a good thing to have, and it's a nice thing to say to someone else. Often associated with hiphop, but I think it's a great term.:) I embrace all new slang - English is such a screwed up language anyhow, I don't feel bad abusing it.;)
Wait till they invent storage devices that work in the 4th dimention (time)! Just think: "Professor invents 4 dimentional storage device. Coming to stores 20 years ago!"
SirSlud (looking for more storage space for all his prOn)
Oh yeah... and one more thing I'd love to ask Bob. If the cost of computing is going down so fast, why is the cost of being a Microsoft customer is going up just as fast? Heehee.
God how I hate that quote. =) Perfect example of why Microsoft is where it is today. If people can't figure out the canyon-sized hole in Herbold's reasoning, they deserve the Windows platform.;)
> Actually, the Dimension line is really geared towards small businesses and home users.
You misunderstood. I mean for desk jockeys in corperations. Ie, the standard cubicle computer. And sorry for using the word average (tm). It would seem one can't use the word these days without someone pointing out they're "average" and don't fit your description. At any rate, I don't imagine the average Linux user has the power to buy 50 computers a year. And if you do buy 50 computers a year (presumably for employees at your company), I don't imagine assembling each of them as much of an option anyhow.;) I was indeed referring to the do-it-yourselfer types.
When I worked at Nortel, we all had Dimensions, corperate wide, on our desks (well, okay, I'm almost positive they were Dimensions.. they were desk machines, not server machines). I can't tell you how much I would have preferred to have people running Linux so I didn't have to run around to every computer and fix them at the desks themself. This is what I was saying - it would be great if this helped push Linux on to the desks in cubicle environments.
... considering the average Linux user isn't the type to purchase from large companies like Dell. On the other hand, Dell supplies to many corperatee IT companies like GE (Global Enterprise?) and such. Maybe this will contribute to the acceptance of Linux in the corperate invironment?
SirSlud
Re:Commercialize, commercialize, commercialize
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Lo-Tech Cinema
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> When it comes to art, the average consumer doesn't know what he or she wants"
I get in trouble alot when I say stuff like this. Obviously, its not a universal truth or anything, but I think many people forget that movies, just like paintings, are works of art. You could have found thousands of people who would have liked to hang paintings of flowers up on their walls, but imagine if they all asked Dali to do it - sure, people might have enjoyed his flowers, but what/he/ liked painting was ultimately a more enriching cultural offering.
I was alluding a little more to the idea that if I strolled up and asked people what movie they think should be made, I'll bet a sizable chunk would request a movie based on a story they already knew, or characters familiar to them; like the movie equivilent of a cover band. I think the far more interesting movies come from artists with their own visions and their own insights.
As a musician, it's my job to push the art forward. People say my music doesn't sound enough like... because often I feel thats what seperates the artists from the non artists. It's not the ability to draw well, to hit the keys quickly or to know the appropriate artistic techniques (though obviously these skills are required during the process). It's the ability to think outside the box - to come up with something no one's seen/heard/thought of before, and package it appealingly.
I respect that the demands of the people/are/ heavily influenced by their limited choices available for consumption. Perhaps you are right, and that public demand would be far more varied if their cultural intake was more varied. But I still maintain that artists are more in it to do things no one's done before - not repackage other things with their own style. And that the results of such an approach are far more interesting on the whole, anyhow.
Even if such a project fails, at least it doesn't take you down with it, since it wasn't specifically made for/you/. Seeing blockbusters these days makes me feel like I've been insulted personally - it'd be easier to swallow if I knew if the artists involved were only after their own artistic vision.
Now this is good. I've been a leading the charge on behalf of PASH (People Against Smart Hamsters) for a few years now, and I need to take my campaign online. How can I get my message heard? I couldn't help but notice hamsters would be moderating our questions, so maybe this is the true test of internet advocacy and political campaign.
SirSlud
Re:BWP did NOT invent this.
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I'm very much in agreement here. Even 3 films later (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma), he's still not eating up huge budgets, and still making great films.
This Anon Coward makes a very good point, although to do lowtek successfully in horror is a more impressive feat than comedy methinks.
Commercialize, commercialize, commercialize
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The ironic thing is that the entertainment industry thinks entertainment is a thing you 'produce' through 'calculated production decisions'.
If hollywood thinks it can just go low tek now, they're missing the point. We want movies by movie makers who want to see their own movies - not movies by producers who want to make a movie people want to see.
When it comes to art, the average consumer doesn't know what he or she wants - and while he or she might often cry for a remake of a beloved show from his or her past or some adaptation of their favorite comic, generally a completely new movie without a previous social context will entertain far more. Its time hollywood drops this "make what the people want to see" attitude and do what the makers of "The Blair Witch Project" did - make a movie/they/ wanted to see.
Hightek or lowtek, I don't think thats the issue (although invariably everyone will think it is, and as such, yay, new fad time). It's the attitude and approach to making movies - make it for love, not money.
See how it all works out? With respect to the money-can't-buy-me-love dept. article, us computer guys may not have much time to do well with the ladies, but at least we get free beer! Count me in!
Sure, you/could/ blame RedHat, provided your boss doesn't know they didn't actually write Linux.
Actually, I feel the name credibility is far stronger than the accountability. How many cars have been sold simply on the basis that the purchaser's friend owned one, and thus the purchaser didn't do much reasearch into finding a superior one?
Stop the planet I wanna get off. No wait, I know, I'll just fire up a server, log on, and declare myself on another planet. (www.planetslud.com?)
If you can see what I'm getting at, all the paper in the world wouldn't convince me that one can belong to a cyber 'nation'. I'm sick of the hearing about the online 'community'. Real life allows us to share information, love, hostility; the net only lets us do it more efficiently and on a less intimate basis.
I don't see the advantage of an online country - because when it comes down to it, it's still a real life hand on a real life power button. The interaction through computers is simply a proxy by which we can channel our decision making. I don't believe there's any political 'system' that could only be used on the net that couldn't be used in real life.
Although, admittedly, if they find something that seems to work well, in theory they could take this 'beta' political system and try it out in real life. That might be interesting, to use an internet community as a testbed for a real life political-social system.
Microsoft has been shooting themselves in the feet for years now. Tests like these won't bring the giant down and won't cause their meat and potatoes market segment (ie the business peeps who make the tech decisions) to wither away.
No one is surprised that the test box crashed. I mean, people who've been using Microsoft machines for years think computers are/supposed/ to crash on a regular basis. Obviously this kind of marketing won't turn a Linux user into a Microsoft user, but I highly doubt you could find anyone who's looked at the past few months of scrambling my Microsoft and decided to switch to Linux.
The only real reason people switch brands in the tech world is accountability if you ask me: (1) If you're running Windows and someone hacks/crashes your box, you just tell your superior that it was Microsoft's fault. You can tell him lots of big companies use it (business types love name dropping) and so its not your fault something went wrong.
(2) If you're running Linux you/can't point at anyone/ when something goes wrong. This is what makes the business people shy from it. There's no one to blame when it fails. What they completely disregard is the fact that Linux will fail you far less often than WinSomething and that when it/does/ fail, you can/fix it/.
"any (non-X)" is exactly the point. My annoyance comes with the fact that there are more people out there who allow their kids to watch violent films but not films with genetalia. But your kid is gunna have sex someday (well, hopefully) anyhow, so whats the big deal? "Wide Eyes Shut" had to be altered to avoid an X rating. But "The Matrix"? Unscathed. I'll tell you right now I'd rather show my young kid Wide Eyes Shut over The Matrix any day. We judge our art on how it looks - not what it means. This is what bothers me.
Incidentally, if my comment didn't make it clear, I though Katz's article barely scratched the surface of the issue. (Which is why I elaborated with my own drivel.) I know where he's coming from, but his arguments are obvious, and mostly moot.
I tend to agree with most people here in that Katz material isn't really all that noteworthy, and probably not worth the space he's given.
The recent talks on censorship have simply gone to show how we've become a lowest common denominator society.
a) We'll gladly deny millions of kids the responsibility of enjoying a movie to ensure that a handful don't use it as a source of twisted inspiration and do anything bad with it.
b) Making something available to the public is far harder than making something unavailable. Ie, the group that/doesn't/ want something will almost invariably win over the (generally larger) group that/does/ want something. This is the lowest common denominator - we seem to be pulling back art, media, culture as fast as we can find slices of the population that have a problem with it.
If you buy into the law of conservation of badness, you can suggest that censoring an experience will cause 10 children to go out and do it themselves out of curiosity, while making the experience avaiable will cause 10 different children to go out and do it themselves out of imitation. To put it more simply, some kids start smoking cause someone lets them try it, others start cause their parents pretented like smoking didn't exist.
Those in favour of censorship are often some of the most hypocritical of the bunch. Ei, a group of judges that would coil in horror when called to judge upon their own private interests.
The other thing that irks me is the complete lack of focus on the responsibility of the artist. To get right to the point we shouldn't/need/ censorship because an artist should create his work with a clear intention to present his or her values. The thing many people can't grasp is that you can support positive moral views by presenting subversive ones. It is up to the consumer to distinguish what is being presented in a 'dont do this' light and what is not. I firmly believe (I'm 21) that kids are able to do this if their parents havn't twisted their minds already with the "monkey see, monkey do" and "see no evil, hear no evil" mentality.
Slashdot Mirror
To speculate and elaborate a little on Red Pen's "Reality Check" ....
.. yay. :P
... depends how this is implemented on the browser with regards to how results are handled/displayed.
... only under 1998 documents, for instance.) Each document will, I assume, have a full DN (distinguished name) that describes their location in the hierarchy (for example: ou="netscape.com", c="1998", c="Budgets", cn="Version 0.6") but if you search from say ou="netscape.com, c="1998", c="Budgets" as a search root, a search on Version 0.6 will return only the one record, since it must be a unique identifier (thus the name distinguished name).
:) Suggestions are welcome.
Presumably, as a sys admin, you have a web server running. Along comes your boss to tell you to implement the common name protocal. Here we go:
1. You set up some sort of Directory Server. This will store the mapping and define the category schema's of your intranet's store of documents. Depnding on how logical your file systems schema's is, your directory schema might be very similar.
2. You add entries to your directory server - one for every document you wish to be accessible by common names. Good thing about this: your entry names can contain spaces
3. Browsers, once they support it, will allow you to configure a directory server to point at (Netscape already does, for use with your address book).
4. Browsers will have functionality such that when you type in a document name, it searches said directory server, beginning at a particular root, for said entry. Results are returned, I suppose
5. You have do cocurrently maintain your filesystem in synch with your directory server, or alternatively, develop a tool which allows some sort of method to 'check in' a document to your intranet that handles the moving of the file to the proepr location on the file system and additionaly adds an entry to the directory structure reflecting its location in your document hierarchy.
6. Your end users only have to remember document names, not full paths, but they will get different results based on search roots. (Ie
Keep in mind this is a speculation of how it will be implemented. I have lots of directory server experience, but as of yet I have yet to see it implemented as a layer beween a brower and a file structure.
Hope this helps - it's not exactly a search engine, and it does end up in more work for the sys admin, as far as I'm concerned. And as always, I never suggest that I'm always right.
Directory servers are ideal for just that. Directories. Directory information. Directory entries can contain attributes, secutiry information, and organization hierachy, and most importanly a schema of allowed attributes based on position within the hierachy. Being a simpler, friendlier revision of X500(okay, I can't remember every protocal name :P) this is what it was designed for, and this is what it's good for.
.. well, a file system. I'm not against the whole CN thing, and consequently the deployment of directory servers, but I /am/ against using it for the resolution of documents and files. It's perfect for looking up names, records, entries. But it's absolute overkill for document location resolution. Akin to using a tank to kill an ant.
If your point is that corperations are pushing it into their intranets cause it was quite the buzzword for awhile, I'll agree. It does make storing vast amounts of hierachial data very fast, but so does
In all fairness, the explosion of the web could never have been forseen. And it's not exactly easy to get a new protocal layer out the door.
.com addresses is the result of media hype. For example, www.such.com/sirslud seems inherently uncooler than www.sirslud.com ... because the public associates having a whole .com to yourself as pretty damn cool. Why, you'll never have a building as large as Coca-Cola's, but you can have a web address that's just as slick and simple as theirs!
.com, it's not a respectable front door to a commercial site. If anything, I'd say that on the commercial side, URLs are misused.
;) If anything, I see this as a technology to keep people from having to type file extensions and slashes .. is this really worth a whole other server/protocal/admin_duty stuffed onto your network?
But more importantly, I disagree with your assesment of the use of domain names. I'd charge the popularity of
www.coke.com/somesuchpromo is just as easy to remember as www.somesuchpromo.com, if not more intuitive, but there seems to me that there's aa certain unsaid rule that if you need to go beyond the
Not to mention that document names have nothing to say about their heirarchy and context - URLs do if the site is structured properly. To pull the example off CNN, 1996 Budget Plan says nothing about the group, stage, and version of the document. At least a URL, and consequently knowing the directory stucture leading to the document enforces a certain amount of organization and context for the document. Common names simply add one more layer on which to maintain and organize, a thing we all know techies hate the worst.
Am I missing something? The whole reason URLs get hard to remember is because some sites are designed improperly and HTML documents are given cryptic names. But just as web maintainers fail to maintain an easy to remember document hierarchy, they will also be resposible (presumably) for setting up the common name servers. Inevitably, they will just make the same mistake once given this Common Name Format. (Ie, every large company I've ever worked with has had so much documentation that they had a numbering system for documents. I'd imagine this is what they'd use if given a Common Name layer. Is it that much easier to remember "RSV 1345 HM Control Interface Design Document" than "spudge/current/dds/" and grab the document from that directory?)
.. it's because technologies designed to make stuff "user friendly" only inhibit users from learning how to solve problems themselves. Techies on a mission to make everything easy for end users are (knowingly or not) contributing to the dumbing down of "end users" - I often charge M$ does the same thing. Hiding functionality behind a nice curtain only makes matters worse ... and just when the general public was starting to get the hang of things .... sigh.
At any rate, abstraction by way of layers like these only obfuscate matters more - and the keep the end users from having any clue whats really going on. The reason help desks get so many calls isn't cause people are stupid
> the site
:P Sorry, my stupidity is at an all time high.
Oh, you mean Vovida, not Slashdot.
If you're having problems (I'm using Netscape for Solaris, but I don't have any problems), and want to use Lynx, go into your user preferances and check "Lite slashdot". At least I think thats what it's called. It makes things simpler for Lynx and other lite browsers.
"props" is slang "respect" in a sense.
:) I embrace all new slang - English is such a screwed up language anyhow, I don't feel bad abusing it. ;)
I give him/her props. = Respect to him/her!
Props to Dave. = Respect to Dave!
He/she's got props. = He/she gets my respect!
I don't think there is a word to word mapping for it, but you can give it out or have it. In any case, its a good thing to have, and it's a nice thing to say to someone else. Often associated with hiphop, but I think it's a great term.
For the love of god, I was logged in and it posted as anon. Sheesh. Maybe there /is/ some worth in that preview button. (duck)
SirSlud
Haha! Leave it up to a tech paper to suggest picturing something in 4 dimensions simplifies one's understanding of it. ;)
Wait till they invent storage devices that work in the 4th dimention (time)! Just think:
"Professor invents 4 dimentional storage device. Coming to stores 20 years ago!"
SirSlud
(looking for more storage space for all his prOn)
Oh yeah ... and one more thing I'd love to ask Bob. If the cost of computing is going down so fast, why is the cost of being a Microsoft customer is going up just as fast? Heehee.
SirSlud
God how I hate that quote. =) Perfect example of why Microsoft is where it is today. If people can't figure out the canyon-sized hole in Herbold's reasoning, they deserve the Windows platform. ;)
SirSlud.
> Actually, the Dimension line is really geared towards small businesses and home users.
;) I was indeed referring to the do-it-yourselfer types.
.. they were desk machines, not server machines). I can't tell you how much I would have preferred to have people running Linux so I didn't have to run around to every computer and fix them at the desks themself. This is what I was saying - it would be great if this helped push Linux on to the desks in cubicle environments.
You misunderstood. I mean for desk jockeys in corperations. Ie, the standard cubicle computer. And sorry for using the word average (tm). It would seem one can't use the word these days without someone pointing out they're "average" and don't fit your description. At any rate, I don't imagine the average Linux user has the power to buy 50 computers a year. And if you do buy 50 computers a year (presumably for employees at your company), I don't imagine assembling each of them as much of an option anyhow.
When I worked at Nortel, we all had Dimensions, corperate wide, on our desks (well, okay, I'm almost positive they were Dimensions
SirSlud
... considering the average Linux user isn't the type to purchase from large companies like Dell. On the other hand, Dell supplies to many corperatee IT companies like GE (Global Enterprise?) and such. Maybe this will contribute to the acceptance of Linux in the corperate invironment?
SirSlud
> When it comes to art, the average consumer doesn't know what he or she wants"
/he/ liked painting was ultimately a more enriching cultural offering.
... because often I feel thats what seperates the artists from the non artists. It's not the ability to draw well, to hit the keys quickly or to know the appropriate artistic techniques (though obviously these skills are required during the process). It's the ability to think outside the box - to come up with something no one's seen/heard/thought of before, and package it appealingly.
/are/ heavily influenced by their limited choices available for consumption. Perhaps you are right, and that public demand would be far more varied if their cultural intake was more varied. But I still maintain that artists are more in it to do things no one's done before - not repackage other things with their own style. And that the results of such an approach are far more interesting on the whole, anyhow.
/you/. Seeing blockbusters these days makes me feel like I've been insulted personally - it'd be easier to swallow if I knew if the artists involved were only after their own artistic vision.
I get in trouble alot when I say stuff like this. Obviously, its not a universal truth or anything, but I think many people forget that movies, just like paintings, are works of art. You could have found thousands of people who would have liked to hang paintings of flowers up on their walls, but imagine if they all asked Dali to do it - sure, people might have enjoyed his flowers, but what
I was alluding a little more to the idea that if I strolled up and asked people what movie they think should be made, I'll bet a sizable chunk would request a movie based on a story they already knew, or characters familiar to them; like the movie equivilent of a cover band. I think the far more interesting movies come from artists with their own visions and their own insights.
As a musician, it's my job to push the art forward. People say my music doesn't sound enough like
I respect that the demands of the people
Even if such a project fails, at least it doesn't take you down with it, since it wasn't specifically made for
SirSlud
Now this is good. I've been a leading the charge on behalf of PASH (People Against Smart Hamsters) for a few years now, and I need to take my campaign online. How can I get my message heard? I couldn't help but notice hamsters would be moderating our questions, so maybe this is the true test of internet advocacy and political campaign.
SirSlud
I'm very much in agreement here. Even 3 films later (Mallrats, Chasing Amy, Dogma), he's still not eating up huge budgets, and still making great films.
This Anon Coward makes a very good point, although to do lowtek successfully in horror is a more impressive feat than comedy methinks.
The ironic thing is that the entertainment industry thinks entertainment is a thing you 'produce' through 'calculated production decisions'.
/they/ wanted to see.
If hollywood thinks it can just go low tek now, they're missing the point. We want movies by movie makers who want to see their own movies - not movies by producers who want to make a movie people want to see.
When it comes to art, the average consumer doesn't know what he or she wants - and while he or she might often cry for a remake of a beloved show from his or her past or some adaptation of their favorite comic, generally a completely new movie without a previous social context will entertain far more. Its time hollywood drops this "make what the people want to see" attitude and do what the makers of "The Blair Witch Project" did - make a movie
Hightek or lowtek, I don't think thats the issue (although invariably everyone will think it is, and as such, yay, new fad time). It's the attitude and approach to making movies - make it for love, not money.
See how it all works out? With respect to the money-can't-buy-me-love dept. article, us computer guys may not have much time to do well with the ladies, but at least we get free beer! Count me in!
SirSlud
Sure, you /could/ blame RedHat, provided your boss doesn't know they didn't actually write Linux.
Actually, I feel the name credibility is far stronger than the accountability. How many cars have been sold simply on the basis that the purchaser's friend owned one, and thus the purchaser didn't do much reasearch into finding a superior one?
SirSlud
Stop the planet I wanna get off. No wait, I know, I'll just fire up a server, log on, and declare myself on another planet. (www.planetslud.com?)
If you can see what I'm getting at, all the paper in the world wouldn't convince me that one can belong to a cyber 'nation'. I'm sick of the hearing about the online 'community'. Real life allows us to share information, love, hostility; the net only lets us do it more efficiently and on a less intimate basis.
I don't see the advantage of an online country - because when it comes down to it, it's still a real life hand on a real life power button. The interaction through computers is simply a proxy by which we can channel our decision making. I don't believe there's any political 'system' that could only be used on the net that couldn't be used in real life.
Although, admittedly, if they find something that seems to work well, in theory they could take this 'beta' political system and try it out in real life. That might be interesting, to use an internet community as a testbed for a real life political-social system.
SirSlud
Microsoft has been shooting themselves in the feet for years now. Tests like these won't bring the giant down and won't cause their meat and potatoes market segment (ie the business peeps who make the tech decisions) to wither away.
/supposed/ to crash on a regular basis. Obviously this kind of marketing won't turn a Linux user into a Microsoft user, but I highly doubt you could find anyone who's looked at the past few months of scrambling my Microsoft and decided to switch to Linux.
/can't point at anyone/ when something goes wrong. This is what makes the business people shy from it. There's no one to blame when it fails. What they completely disregard is the fact that Linux will fail you far less often than WinSomething and that when it /does/ fail, you can /fix it/.
No one is surprised that the test box crashed. I mean, people who've been using Microsoft machines for years think computers are
The only real reason people switch brands in the tech world is accountability if you ask me:
(1) If you're running Windows and someone hacks/crashes your box, you just tell your superior that it was Microsoft's fault. You can tell him lots of big companies use it (business types love name dropping) and so its not your fault something went wrong.
(2) If you're running Linux you
Just my social take on this whole mess.
SirSlud
"any (non-X)" is exactly the point. My annoyance comes with the fact that there are more people out there who allow their kids to watch violent films but not films with genetalia. But your kid is gunna have sex someday (well, hopefully) anyhow, so whats the big deal? "Wide Eyes Shut" had to be altered to avoid an X rating. But "The Matrix"? Unscathed. I'll tell you right now I'd rather show my young kid Wide Eyes Shut over The Matrix any day. We judge our art on how it looks - not what it means. This is what bothers me.
SirSlud
Incidentally, if my comment didn't make it clear, I though Katz's article barely scratched the surface of the issue. (Which is why I elaborated with my own drivel.) I know where he's coming from, but his arguments are obvious, and mostly moot.
I tend to agree with most people here in that Katz material isn't really all that noteworthy, and probably not worth the space he's given.
The recent talks on censorship have simply gone to show how we've become a lowest common denominator society.
/doesn't/ want something will almost invariably win over the (generally larger) group that /does/ want something. This is the lowest common denominator - we seem to be pulling back art, media, culture as fast as we can find slices of the population that have a problem with it.
/need/ censorship because an artist should create his work with a clear intention to present his or her values. The thing many people can't grasp is that you can support positive moral views by presenting subversive ones. It is up to the consumer to distinguish what is being presented in a 'dont do this' light and what is not. I firmly believe (I'm 21) that kids are able to do this if their parents havn't twisted their minds already with the "monkey see, monkey do" and "see no evil, hear no evil" mentality.
a) We'll gladly deny millions of kids the responsibility of enjoying a movie to ensure that a handful don't use it as a source of twisted inspiration and do anything bad with it.
b) Making something available to the public is far harder than making something unavailable. Ie, the group that
If you buy into the law of conservation of badness, you can suggest that censoring an experience will cause 10 children to go out and do it themselves out of curiosity, while making the experience avaiable will cause 10 different children to go out and do it themselves out of imitation. To put it more simply, some kids start smoking cause someone lets them try it, others start cause their parents pretented like smoking didn't exist.
Those in favour of censorship are often some of the most hypocritical of the bunch. Ei, a group of judges that would coil in horror when called to judge upon their own private interests.
The other thing that irks me is the complete lack of focus on the responsibility of the artist. To get right to the point we shouldn't
SirSlud